>The Fifth of July>by L. Neil Smith
><lneil@lneilsmith.org>
>
>Special to TLE>
>On nightly TV "news" reports, the Jennings, Brokaws, and Whatevers
>love to make snotty propaganda over the charming and ebullient way
>of celebrating Arabs have, of firing their AK47s and their pistols
>into the air, just as we once fired our muskets and Kentucky rifles.
>(They give their children guns, as well, exactly as we used to do.)
>Most of us no longer recognize that joyous urge, let alone commend
>it, as we ought to. (Please don't give me a load of crap about the
>safety of the practice, either; read _Hatcher's Notebook_, if you
>can still find a copy in this hive of political correctness, and
>then we'll talk.) That urge is the very wellspring of traditional
>American Independence Day festivities.

--snip rest--

Dear John,

With all due respect to the man whom the term 'Libertarian'
rightfully belongs, I must protest -- only on the technical aspect of
his less than proper regard of human frailty.

The idea that a firearm may be safely discharged into the air without
regard to where the bullet may be fall, is more than a bit
irresponsible.

And, yes, I do own a copy of "Hatcher's Notebook"; Hatcher does
indeed describe various damage -- to hard objects. Note that none of
the men involved in his experiments volunteered to become targets for
falling projectiles.

Now, I don't know about you, but there is a significant difference
between wood, and human flesh.

Tossing a bullet into the air without regard to whatever consequence
might result, is the very same thing as random violence.

Infant babies have notoriously soft skulls. Care to guess the results
of a bullet hitting one of them? And, even if the bullet caused no
permanent damage, with what excuse may one rationalize the act of
violence to that child? Simply that they were having fun without
regard to any possible consequence?

What would be the difference between shooting a neighbor's windows
out willfully, or simply shooting into the air with wild abandon, and
accomplishing the same damage?

If Libertarian reasoning is to be the standard by which the politics
of freedom is measured, then it behooves each of us to reconsider our
motives and their attendant consequences long before we anticipate a
first move. If we don't, then we are no better than riffraff in high
office, who see nothing wrong with having fun at our expense.

If nothing else, our first article of faith must lay with the Natural
Laws.

I've noticed of late that people are again stating that a Libertarian
believes, among other things, that one must never initiate force
against another person.

Meanwhile, every day, various government agents are using guns and
other forceful means -- including "legal" and judicial -- to enforce
unconstitutional laws against people who've not harmed anyone. The
term "initiate" is met by such actions.

So my question:

If someone specifically selects a government agent who behaves in
such a manner -- initiates force against someone who's truly done
nothing wrong -- and exterminates him, can that person still be a
good Libertarian?

First off, I think there is much merit in your idea. I don't believe,
at the moment, that it is feasible, so I am remaining anonymous for
the moment. (Paranoia in the interest of personal security is never
wasted.)

However, I would like to lend some (anonymous) support to the cause,
at least until I am convinced that it can work in the real world. I
am a writer (unknown, I'm afraid), and am quite willing to contribute
essays, polemics, and anything else you need. I'm not nearly the
essayist that El Neil is, but perhaps I can help anyhow.

One real-world consideration you neglected to consider in your essay,
though, troubles me. For a secession to have even a ghost of a
chance, free trade is (obviously) essential. The Free State Project
will have a far better chance of success if carried out in a state
that is not landlocked. If Iowa or Wyoming secede, the Federal
Government can simply tariff it to death. Even a state on the Great
Lakes or St. Lawrence Seaway could be choked off by Canada and the
US. An ocean front state would be best, preferably one with a foreign
border as well (Texas, by only these criteria, is perfect). There are
other considerations, naturally, but this struck me as essential.

Good luck to you sir, and I hope to see this idea grow and mature in
the near future.

Jason P Sorens has nice idea, and it could work, except for one sore
point: It allows those who achieve high office to corrupt the
essential principles of the idea of government.

I have written here before about a method of government which would
satisfy every Libertarian ideal.

But first, let me concisely explain my comment above:

Our current form of government supposes high ideals, both morally and
ethically, on the part of our elected and appointed officials.

It doesn't take a political scientist to understand that such
thinking is sheer folly. The Founders of this nation had a lot to
work with, but the political interests of the day had a say very much
beyond their actual physical numbers.

Were the founders went wrong is that they left the door wide open to
corruption of principles, and all of it is entirely legal. Two
hundred years of American experience in government shows that even
the men who were of supposedly high ideals, were actually nothing of
the kind -- from the get-go.

So, even if Libertarians succeed, who's to say that 5, 10, or
20 years down the pike, the same old crap isn't right back in place?

If you don't change the essential nature of the beast, it will revert
to its basic nature: accumulation of all power.

If a group of Libertarians do in fact succeed in taking the political
power of a particular state, just remember this: the tide can just as
easily be reversed by a consonant act of yet another party, by the
very same method. Imagine a determined group of New England
communists moving directly into that same state and completely
reversing the Libertarian tide.

There's more of them than us.

If the government ever figured that a group of us were at work doing
such a thing, they'd send in a complementary group of statists to
counter the move: either stalemate or checkmate.

The answer to this is to change the essential nature of the
government, while leaving the framework intact.

I wrote an untitled piece here, a bit ago, describing the structure
of what I considered to be the obvious changes.

I will repeat here that when a politician has no power to decide how
much money is collected, and no power to decide where any funding is
disbursed, then bribing him is a useless thing.

The whore of commerce would not be involved in the process of making
any kind of decisions in government, as her interests would be with
the people themselves, and not the powerless politicians.

And, if the government cannot act without the will of the people,
then it could not do what it does now.

Since I can't find any reference that allows me to to Email directly
to Jimmy "Peanut-Farmer" Carter, I'll have to post my response to him
and hope he see's it on his way through.

Dear Mr. Carter,

Since I was young and stupid in 1976 and actually voted for you then
I feel justified in telling you to "SHUT UP!" You were a pathetic,
socialist fool then and I was very young and actually fell for your
line. You were unqualified to be president in 1976 and thankfully
everyone had their fill of your drivel by 1980 in order to chuck you
out of the White House!

You did more harm in 4 years than almost any president in history
until Billy Bob Clinton beat you at the Communist/Socialist Game.

In case you didn't hear me: SHUT UP MORON!!

Go back to pounding nails for "habitat for welfare queens" and leave
really important stuff to people with some smarts and backbone.

I'll take the flak for voting for you but I don't have to listen to
you WHINE about a semi-conservative president!

You are part of the reason that we are in such deep trouble these
days! Can anyone see where we left the Panama Canal? Oh, there it is,
over in the "Chinese" area!

Being a pathetic excuse for a "leader" for a few years does not give
you perpetual claim to the media spotlight "for life"! So go pound
nails and as a matter of fact go "POUND SAND"! Catch my drift?

Paul Birch makes a pretty good point about the etymology of
"libertarian" (as well as the fact that its heritage was English at
about the same time as (or even before?) it was American ...).

What has always worked for me in "the LP pledge" is this:

However one defines and perceives his or her appreciation of
"non-aggression" (ranging from personal actions to tacit acceptance
of tyranny -- by a state or other power-center?), if in the face of
mere inconvenience or personal tastes (as opposed to actual force or
fraud) one's personal perception is that of either (a) "there oughta
be a law" or (b) "we need to stop that" ...

One is NOT a libertarian ...

If the general tendency is to seek other non-statist ways of handling
problems (even if in some cases the person has not 'thought it
through completely") .. there is hope! [no pun intended?]

Our job in persuading more and more people to choose Liberty ... is
merely opening their eyes to the wider issues involved ...

Assuming they have a foot on the right side to begin with ...

The toughest battle seems to be in deciding when to give up on those
who just "don't want to be free" ...

I was driving through the Eastern Shore of Maryland listening to Rush
Limbaugh hijacking the ideas of freedom and liberty while ruminating
over my progression from conservative to libertarian.

When I first heard Rush in 1990 it was easy to believe that the
ideals he was speaking about, liberty and freedom, were actually
contained with the Republican party. After all, I had grown up in a
rock solid Republican county of Pennsylvania and believing that
conservatives were for freedom and liberty was not hard to believe.
Nevertheless, through the evolution of my ideas and philosophy, I
have begun to cut through the illusions of mythology and half-truths
that surround the hazing summit of liberty and freedom.

One of the most shocking to me, and one that I am still dealing with
to this day is that Democracy is actually and anathema to individual
liberty and freedom. How is that so you ask? Throughout all of our
schooling, we are taught that the democratic system offers the most
freedom - but is that necessarily true - after all, we are also
taught that Abraham Lincoln was a savior.

How can democracy be an anathema to individual liberty and freedom?
One just needs to take a brief look back at history to understand
that the broadening of access to a democracy leads to the dissolution
of liberty. This has happened to both the United Kingdom and the
United States - that as democracy is opened to increasingly people,
freedom and liberty begin to wane. Britain's liberalization of voting
laws in the 19th century led to the expansion of government
programmes and regulations. The same happened in the United States
later in the same century and early in the 20th. Why is that so?
Because, in a system that does not represent individuals but pockets
of disparate population, every democratized citizen wants something
from the government and their elected representative - attempting to
be all things to all people - attempts to succeed in providing that.
This is why we see Republicans supporting certain social programmes
and Democrats supporting certain economically beneficial programmes.
This response to the will of the people, a phrase so popular in
today's lexicon, leads to the expansion of the government pie. In
order to satiate the government's hunger for both power and money,
the government grows. This problem is exacerbated when the number of
representatives is frozen at an arbitrary number - take 435 for
example - and does not represent individuals. This growth in
government continues regardless of which of the two parties are in
power. As democracy is broadened even further - motor voters laws,
registration drives, etc, liberty will continue to wane.

Thomas Jefferson, and other non-federalist founding fathers, realized
the perils that liberty could face even in a democracy and placed
this passage in the Declaration of Independence "That to secure these
Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to instituted new Government,
laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers
in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness." Jefferson goes to to offer insight into the
role that status quo plays in the continuance of despotic and
tyrannical government,"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than
to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are
accustomed."

The growth and expansion of democracy will continue to erode what is
left of our freedoms and liberties until we are forced again to seek
out a new government that shall seem most likely to effect our safety
and happiness.

While I agree that government has no business regulating fireworks
(or just about anything else), somehow I can't bring myself to sing
the praises of child labor. Come on, Neil, be real. Child labor was a
system of ripping off the poor by (government protected) businesses
looking for cheap, slave-like workers. I care not for what
politicians babble. However, it was, in my humble opinion, perfectly
all right for labor unions--then freely joined associations of
individuals, attempting to enforce their rights without governmental
interference--to protest and embarass employers away from using the
next-best-thing-to-slave-labor. (Yeah, I did say that the unions were
attempting to exist back then without government
interference--remember that until the 1930s, the U.S. Supreme Court
had held that a free association of individuals, attempting to
collectively bargain with an employer to increase their bargaining
strength, was illegal as a violation of the Commerce Clause of the
Constitution! The fact that this view was merely purchased by the
wealthy with political contributions, and has not one bit of support
in any honest scholarship on the Constitution, did not slow them up
for a second).

By the way, Neil--congratulations on your nomination for another
Prometheus award! I trust you will not be crazy enough to come to the
Big Pretzel (i.e., Philadelphia), during August, however. The weather
here in the People's Republic of Brotherly Love is usually
"98-98-100" in August--98 degrees, 98 percent humidity, and 100
percent cloud cover.